Helen Lindon

Helen Lindon's work is grounded in a deep understanding of paint and of the human eye. Her early work focuses on form through colour and takes our perceptions through their paces. Colours spar with each other. Taut structure holds colours bursting with vibrancy at a point of harmony. Such is the delicacy of this equilibrium that the smallest of marks added or removed would rupture the order and release the havoc. Contrastingly other paintings clearly celebrate the phenomenology of this optical mayhem. Even the paintings that attack our eye - bouncing our perceptions back and forth as the image pulsates with colour - are highly ordered by this painter's articulate brush.

It is on the techniques of creating this equilibrium that Lindon's work has focused. Her exploration of the formal pictorial mechanics of this balance manipulates the rods and cones in our eye. Fine brushwork weaving layers of glazes and oils creates a composition within which the image is suspended. Her paintings have great sensitivity, breathing and changing in the light that they inhabit. As you move around them the layers of glazes and paint counterpoint each other so that the paintings resonate with a musical vibration. They reveal ingrained colour paths and textural depth. We get a real sense of the picture plane being one side of a cuboid space within which the image lives. Colour becomes a receptacle for the light to describe the paths drawn and the spaces created. The surfaces are redolent of velvet or silk. These are not works designed to be read instantly, they slowly reveal themselves, inviting you into their space.

What is so celebratory about these works is that you get a real sense of the medium suspended behind canvas and picture plane, and an enjoyment in the process of artist as author and craftsman. Furthermore, unlike say Richter's cold analytical approach, layers are never wiped away or removed. They are built upon, one layer inspiring the next. No part is one texture or colour, but a series of pigmented surfaces overlaid to create the illusion of colour, light and space. There is a real physical depth to these paintings that mesmerises the eye and captures the heart.

 

Damian Llambias
Artist, curator and writer